Re: Installing headers to a separate output?

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> skribis:
>
>> On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:32:22 +0100
>> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Guix,
>>> 
>>> should we install headers to separate outputs as we do it in some cases
>>> for really large documentation?  It seems wrong to me to download
>>> substitutes for libraries when at build time only certain headers are
>>> needed.
>>> 
>>> Other distributions have separate “*-devel” or “*-dev” packages (and I’m
>>> ambivalent about this) — would it be a bad idea if we provided “devel”
>>> or “dev” *outputs* so that users had more control over what ends up in
>>> their store?
>>> 
>>> I’m not writing this because I’m annoyed by the current behaviour — I’m
>>> just curious.
>>> 
>>> ~~ Ricardo
>>
>> I thought a bit about it before and I don't really think it'll save that much
>> space. Most of the time the headers are a small part of the total package,
>> and the fine-tuning that comes with chosing exactly which outputs from a
>> build process you actually want seem like they should be left as
>> encouragement for people to hack their systems.
>
> Seconded.  We can add a separate “include” output (there’s already a
> special case for that in gnu-build-system) on a case-by-case basis, like
> we do for documentation, but in practice, I’ve never seen a case where
> moving headers away would be a significant space saving.

Thank you all for your comments.  I agree that it makes sense to do this
on a case-by-case basis only.

Curiosity: satisfied :)

~~ Ricardo